Thread: Walleye on the UL

Caught my first walleye this evening! What made it even more exciting was catching it UL equipment, which made for a heckuva fun fight!

I caught the waylley in the local reservoir spillway at dusk. Only other fish I was catching were small black crappie using the same 1/16oz. underspin swim jig. I thought this one might have been a channel cat at first the way it was fighting, but something felt different. As I worked the fish closer to land, I could tell it was gonna be too big to pull up by hand and was very thankful to have remembered my net. The fish was 22-23 inches and I'm guessing around 4lbs.

Also glad I was using the TCB rod because this one would have been a lot trickier to finagle over the rocks on a shorter, lighter UL rod.

Reel used is a Legalis 2000s-p spooled w/4.6lb Zukibo braid (from Aliexpress). I've been pleasantly surprised w/the braid...especially at ~$4 for 100m. My only complaint is it's so slick I've had some knot slippage issues. 15 wraps on an Alberto (for leaders) or on an improved clinch (lures) and pulling the tag end super-tight w/pliers seems to fix the issue, however.

Thanks, guys!

I'll be danged if I didn't get another one of about the same size right before dawn today.

After catching that first one, I was yearning to land another one, so I headed back to the spillway at 5:30AM...hours before the rest of the family awoke. Angling for walleye, I brought heavier spinning rods (M and ML) for throwing crankbaits and swim jigs. Also brought the same TCB/Legalis combo, and go figure that's the one the walleye today hit on. 1/16oz jig with an orange curly tail and I had a leader on this time (straight braid last time having lost the leader to a snag) which held up just fine with the larger fish.

So 0 walleyes caught in sll prior years of fishing, and suddenly 2 good-sized ones in 48 hours on UL tackle!